


We shall not cross into an unfamiliar land

by Ruta



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Clarke Griffin-centric, F/M, Family Feels, Slow Burn, Wanheda Clarke Griffin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23301007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: The first thing she notices about Bellamy Blake is not the sardonic smile or the provocative tone with which he speaks to her, let alone the derisive light while he eyes her from head to toe. No, the very first thing her gaze lingers on is the ghost of the woman behind him. She looks the age of her mother. She is tall, slim and as beautiful as an exhibition weapon can be. No matter how finely decorated the hilt and scabbard are, the blade is a lethal poison for the soul.When Bellamy insists on opening the door and Clarke tries to stop him, the woman's eyes narrow dangerously. She sees her place a hand on her son's shoulder and repeat her own suggestion. After a moment of consideration Bellamy shakes his head and does the exact opposite of what she and his mother said. He opens the damned door.From that moment, together with his son, Aurora Blake becomes the thorn in her side.(AU where Clarke see ghosts and is the Commander of Death in more than one way)
Relationships: Aurora Blake & Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Clarke Griffin & Jake Griffin, Clarke Griffin & Wells Jaha
Comments: 24
Kudos: 287





	1. Chapter 1

_To want is what bodies do_

_And now we are ghost_

**_\- Marina Tsvetaeva, from "Poem of the End"_ **

i

Her father's ghost shows up for the first time when her eighteenth birthday is less than five months away. She has already spent seven months in solitary and would think she's gone mad if it weren't for the fact that Jake Griffin isn't the first ghost to have ever appeared in front of her.

"Hi, dad," she greets him with a tremulous smile, after a moment of astonished silence. Her fingers are crossed by a slight spasm. She was portraying yet another impossible landscape on one of the walls. She doesn’t cry in seeing him. Why should she? Tears are meant for moments of despair. This is not and at the same time _it is_. She knows what it means that he is there with her and her chest seems too small to contain the boundless mass of her heart.

Her father smiles with the repentance of those who realize that they have done a wrongness to someone they loved and don’t know how to expiate it. Unlike her mother, he never refused her stories, excusing them first as childishness and then as oddities or a plea for attention. But he never really believed her, not until now.

"Hi, honey," he replies.

Clarke closes her eyes, the pencil slips from her loose grip, falling to the floor with a redundant noise.

She doesn’t know what she is feeling in discovering that she is her father's deepest regret.

***

Ghosts have been a constant in her life since she was five, or at least her first real memory of one of them dates to when she was five. She remembers an old lady with a haggard face and skinny hands, sad and kind eyes, with whom she pretended to have tea, who taught her the concept of perspective in the representation of space and the methods to perform it in her drawings.

For her father she always had a fervent imagination even as a child. Curious, precocious, brilliant, they have always said trying to define her.

And _a freak_ , because of the ghosts, but nobody has ever had the courage to say it to her face. Not that there was a need. Cautious, wary, biased looks. Over the years Clarke got used to it. If a little girl finds priceless objects hidden from her ancestors for the "rainy days", shows how to turn on old equipment that even the engineers have forgotten how work, listens to voices that only she can hear and become their spokesperson for getting the regrets that hold them in the right hands, after a while the perplexity turns into a more cutting and cruel feeling. There is no understanding for those who are different or eccentric, for those who don’t follow pre-established schemes, those who don’t show the right attitudes, don’t fall into the system. There is no forgiveness for those who stand out in a pyramidal world in which everyone has a role, a specific place to occupy.

The girl grows up and the doubt in people’s eyes when they look at her becomes the barycenter of her insecurities and the driving force of her daring boldness, of her generosity, of her selflessness, of her pertinacious self-denial.

***

The first thing she notices about Bellamy Blake is not the sardonic smile or the provocative tone with which he speaks to her, let alone the derisive light while he eyes her from head to toe. No, the very first thing her gaze lingers on is the ghost of the woman behind him. She looks the age of her mother. She is tall, slim and as beautiful as an exhibition weapon can be. No matter how finely decorated the hilt and scabbard are, the blade is a lethal poison for the soul.

When Bellamy insists on opening the door and Clarke tries to stop him, the woman's eyes narrow dangerously. She sees her place a hand on her son's shoulder and repeat her own suggestion. After a moment of consideration Bellamy shakes his head and does the exact opposite of what she and his mother said. He opens the damned door.

From that moment, together with his son, Aurora Blake becomes the thorn in her side.

***

Ghosts come and go. Clarke has always been curious about where they go when they’re not with her, however she never expressed her interest out loud. She fears that it would be unwelcome and out of place.

***

Ghosts don't make her a better person but make her older and by sharing their experiences with her in the form of bedtime stories she grew up before her years. She knows secrets that she shouldn't be aware of and with the imaginative power of her mind she has been to places where she never set foot, sometimes she's part of history and reminiscences more than the present.

She realizes that she is different from the rest of the Delinquents. It was like that on the Ark too. Clarke is an anomaly. She always has been. On Earth, however, the differences thin out like shadows. Who cares that she gets information that no one else know about? That her insights are always mostly correct?

Ghosts are her eyes, her memory, her conscience.

She never went against their advice.

There is a first time for everything.

Not even five days have passed since they set foot on Earth and Wells has just tried to talk to her. Clarke pretended not to notice. Her father is with her and observes his retreat with incredibly sad eyes. "You should try to listen what he has to say."

Clarke continues to collect firewood. "I don't want to. I already know what he would say and I don't care."

"Sweetheart-"

"Do you think I want to hear his apology?" She interrupts him. "That I can forgive him for what he did? It's his fault if you're dead."

"I knew what I was doing. I knew the risks."

Of course, he knew. Her father always had a plan for everything and backup plans just in case. He was the man capable of repairing the unthinkable. The couple with miraculous hands, Wells called her parents jokingly. The woman who saved lives and the man who rebuilt from scratch with pieces of scrap.

Wells admired her father and despite this-

"He too," she replies. Her lips are chapped, her mouth dry. She is dehydrated. She squeezes the branches she has collected. "We all have to pay the price of our choices."

***

There are no regrets to hold back Atom. The boy slips into the Beyond like a shadow, his steps slow and sure, without delay. Whatever he is observing, his face is transfigured into an expression of pure and absolute joy.

"Thanks," he says, turning to look at her over his shoulder. He is smiling and the skin around his smile is smooth, not deformed by sores and burns.

Clarke sees him disappear. The blood on her hands is still warm, his eyes wide-open. The murmur of her voice echoes one last note before it breaks.

She closes his eyes with all the delicacy she manages to gather. Bellamy passes her water to clean her hands with a cryptic and intense expression. Neither says anything. Death is death. What's there to add? Any other word would be superfluous.

***

Finding out that it was her mother who betrayed her father and not Wells nearly destroys her. Then something changes and despair is replaced by a drastically different feeling. Anger resonates inside her body like a discordant, disdainful and immoderate melody. Her mother isn't the only one to whom it’s extended. She begins to walk away from the Dropship until the only discernible noise is her accelerated breathing. When she is sure to be completely alone, she screams. Kneeling, her hands sunk in the ground to claw anything in search of a hold, she screams until she has no breath in her lungs, until her throat burns as if she swallowed liquid fire.

When she turns her head towards her father, she is not the only one who has red eyes, wet cheeks.

"Why didn’t’ you tell me?" She whispers, each word a stab of suffering in her larynx.

"You had already lost a parent."

She nods, but it's meaningless. "So, I'm an orphan."

"Don't say that. Your mother-"

"She betrayed you," she says. She sees him back away from her gaze. Whatever expression is on her face it must be terrifying. Enough to make remorse dig out new wrinkles on her father's forehead and around his mouth. _Good_. Now that anger has also begun to wane, there is only desolation. Her mind is a trench. "She let them float you and send me into this hell."

"It was to offer you a better future. You are the last hope."

She knows what he's trying to do. It doesn't matter. There is no reason that holds, every belief collapse under the cruel weight of truth. There are unforgivable actions. She can rationally accept the motivations that prompted her mother to make that decision. She can as a leader, not as a daughter.

"It's as if she killed you. I don't care why she did it. I'll never forgive her. _Never_."

Never, ghosts have taught her, can be a very long time.

***

"Not like that or you'll prick yourself," Aurora says over her shoulder.

Clarke nods thoughtlessly and obviously it's the moment when Bellamy decides to sit next to her. Taken by surprise, she startles, and the needle pricks her finger.

"Be careful, princess or I might think I make you nervous."

She doesn’t raise the head but can practically feel his smirk in the dim light.

"What are you doing?"

She rolls her eyes. "Can’t you see?"

"If you're trying to sew that hole, you're doing a poor job," he comments and strangely his voice doesn't sound critical or offensive.

This convinces her to lay down her arms. She stops before pricking herself again and sighs, frowning at the work done so far. "Do you think I don't know?" The admission has a mortified sound to her own ears. It is so ridiculous. The whole thing is. That she can suture any type of wound, but it escapes her how sew a hole is humiliating, for one thing.

"Give it to me."

His gaze is heavy on her face and for the first time, without the belligerent expression he usually displays, the resemblance to the woman behind him becomes undeniable.

"What?"

Now it’s his turn to be bashful. "I said, give it to me."

She passes him the shirt without another word and looks at him as hypnotized. The needle moves with patience and precision.

"I learned from my mother," he says in a sort of explanation, as if he felt compelled to justify himself. "She was a seamstress."

Clarke glances behind her. Aurora is looking at her son, stiffened to the point of being one with the trunk of the tree.

"Was she good?"

Bellamy nods. His long fingers are fast, but his eyes are far away, lost in old memories which, judging by the tiny smile that he cannot suppress, must bring him enough joy to make him forget where he is, to who he is talking. "Enough that even those uptight women from Alpha Station lowered themselves and came to our door to ask her to make clothes and repair hems. Sometimes the requests were too many and there were days when her hands-" his voice breaks off and suddenly the spell is broken. She sees him blink and the remembrances stop whirling in his gaze. His face shutters, entrenching behind his favorite mask of cold cynicism and ostentatious contempt.

"Everything I know, she taught me," he concludes and shrugs. The boy has disappeared again, and Clarke misses him keenly. "Just like you are your father's daughter, princess, I am my mother's son."

Even if it’s in the shade, the expression on Aurora's face is one that Clarke will never forget.

***

"Wells?"

She sees him emerge from the thick of the woods and the smile dies on her lips. The moonlight passes through his body like a spider web covered in dew.

She feels numb. _No_ , she thinks. _No_. _No_.

***

"It wasn't Murphy," says Wells.

Clarke stopped shaking, but the cold got wedged into her bones. Wells' body is less translucent and opalescent in the first light of dawn. The earth on his grave is still loose.

"Then who?" she asks. Whoever did it, will pay. She will take care of it if necessary.

"Who cares?"

Finally, she turns to look at him. Her best friend. A boy who had his whole life ahead of him, a future that was wretchedly torn from him. Whoever did it, deserves the ferocity of a punishment. It isn’t revenge, it’s justice.

"Whoever was, he's a murderer," she speaks slowly, relentlessly. "He killed you in cold blood, stabbing you in the back. He deserves to pay for the consequences of his actions."

Wells looks at her as if he sees her for the first time, as if he doesn't recognize her. "What happened to your compassion?"

Clarke bites her cheek, strong enough that the taste of blood invades her mouth, dirties her teeth. "It died with you."

***

"It wasn't Murphy!" she exclaims and the vehemence in her voice stops Bellamy's steps. The look he gives her is indecipherable, plants itself in her skull.

"How do you know?"

Clarke is silent.

***

"What happened? You died. I killed you. What-" Charlotte looks around and the panic in her wide eyes tinges the night like a nightmare. As if the horror of having just seen her jump from a cliff wasn’t enough, now her ghost is standing next to Wells'.

"It's all right," Wells reassures her, incredibly patient as he extends a hand towards her. "I was waiting for you."

After she and Bellamy have banished Murphy, after everyone has gone to their tent including Bellamy and Finn, Clarke remains behind and in the silence that surrounds her she approaches the two ghosts that followed them and are now sitting by the fire engaged in conversation, their heads pushed together as if they were confiding secrets. It is an oddly comforting image, so much that for a moment she chooses to overlook the fact that their bodies don’t cast shadows on the ground or on the strange glow of their skin, similar to that distant of the stars, to the dreamlike bioluminescence of the fireflies.

"Do you know what is holding you back?" Wells is saying. After the night they had, his calmness is a balm to the ears. "Your guilt. Forgive yourself and we can go on."

Charlotte frowns, the confusion she feels is evident. "I don't understand. Why are you so kind to me? I took everything from you."

"No, not everything." Wells shakes his head. "Just my future."

Clarke would like to laugh, instead finds herself struggling with sobs. Charlotte is the first to register her presence. "What will happen now?" she asks her.

"You can choose to stay," Clarke replies impulsively.

"What if I don't want to?"

Clarke smiles, but it's a painful smile. She is beginning to understand that gradually it is what everyone will do. Wells and Charlotte are only the first to choose to leave her, but sooner or later her father and Aurora and all those who still must come will do the same. What will become of the girl surrounded by ghosts then? What will remain beyond the chasm of their absence?

"You can choose to go on," she says because she can't lie to her, can't be consciously selfish trying to hold her back.

Charlotte appears heartened and responds to her smile with an uncertain one. Then she turns to Wells and her expression curls up, her voice trembles. "I'm sorry for what I did to you. I was scared and I just wanted the nightmares to disappear. Will you stay with me?"

"I promise," Wells says and his light seems more intense, clearer. He embraces Charlotte's and the night fades around them as if the colors had been diluted. When they begin to fade, she can hardly breath.

"Wells," she calls him, her voice broken by emotion, by the tears that wet her eyelashes and cheeks.

Wells looks at her and the peace in his eyes is the only detail she can focus on. "You are the best among us. You have always been. I will miss you."

_So few grains of happiness_

_measured against all the dark_

_and still the scales balance._

_The world asks of us_

_only the strength we have and we give it._

_Then it asks more, and we give it._

**_\- Jane Hirshfield_ **

ii

She wakes up and for a moment she thinks she died. Every sensation is tempered, the vivid white of the walls makes it difficult to keep her eyes open. She closes them and remembers. A ring of fire. Bellamy. Finn.

When she opens them again Aurora is bent over her, the only stain of color and life in the impersonal sterility of the room and if that is not an oxymoron.

She turns on her side, hides her face in the pillow. "Is he still alive?" she murmurs, her voice muffled by raw cotton fabric, hope something difficult to hide.

"I don’t know."

A heartbeat.

"Octavia?"

A slight hesitation. A cold and gentle stroke on the forehead. "Safe."

***

The insight collected by her father during his patrol confirms the fears she harbored. It seemed too good to be true.

"They are not what they seem to be," says Jake Griffin, pale as he has never even been in life, his hands clenched into fists and something, at the bottom of his unusually hard and steel blue eyes, makes her tremble with the fury that they contain, barely restrained.

"Be careful," he whispers when Dante enters the room. "Don't believe him."

He and Aurora are planted as two pillars next to her, each on her side. Her father squeezes her shoulder. Aurora touches her elbow. Light touches like butterfly wings, practically imperceptible.

 _You are not alone_ , it seems they are saying in their silent and quiet way. _We are with you. You're not alone._

For the first time she feels like it may be true.

***

Finn's ghost doesn’t appear. That night Clarke doesn’t sleep. She doesn't know if what she feels is excruciating relief. Then she begins to see him everywhere.

"It's just an echo," Aurora explains. "Don't get used to it. He will disappear in a couple of days."

She thought that not seeing him was a punishment enough, now learns that there is always a way for things to get worse.

***

The ghost behind Lexa no longer avoids her gaze. Her eyes are gray-green, her hair has an amber tinge. Clarke finds out her name. Costia.

"Don't bother you to not be the first?"

Clarke shakes her head slightly. She has become efficient in carrying on conversations of this type, made of silences and gestures and micro-expressions.

No, it doesn't worry her. She wasn't it even for Finn. It didn't make her love him less intensely, didn't make her detest herself less for what she did to him.

After so many years, if there is a truth she has learned about ghosts, it is precisely that love represents their deepest regret.

With Lexa she also learns that it is a weakness.

***

"I know you don't approve," she says. They’re alone in the tent. She can't look Aurora in the eyes, afraid of what she will find there. Disappointment, most likely.

"I'll go with him," she hears her say after an interval of time that has seemed endless. Clarke jerks her head up. The half smile that arches Aurora's mouth is more familiar than her own reflection. Twin of what Bellamy used when he called her 'princess'. "He won't be alone."

She exhales a sigh that she hadn't realized she had held until then. "Thank you."

What she is thanking her for, though, she's not sure.

***

"My daughter could have died because of you. But in that case maybe my son wouldn't be here."

Clarke thinks back to the chorus of moans and screams, to the stench of burnt flesh, to the tide of ghosts dangling in the rubble of Tondc, to how her own parents started to look at her as if she were something repulsive, no longer the daughter they raised and loved, as if a stranger had usurped her place.

Thinking about what she has done doesn’t make her sleep. It was necessary and she would do it again, especially considering the alternative. This doesn't make it any less wrong. Regardless of the mission and what it entails to save those who remain of the hundred from Mount Weather, Bellamy's life shouldn’t be worth more than that of hundreds of strangers. It isn’t healthy. The reality of the situation doesn’t change. To her he is. _Bellamy is more important_.

"He won't forgive me easily," she says.

Especially when he will find out that she endangered Octavia's life.

"Forgiveness doesn't have to be easy," Aurora replies, as relentless as the passage of time, "otherwise our sins would stop bearing the slightest weight."

***

Dante is not the first person she kills. The dead of Tondc weigh on her conscience like the stone of Sisyphus.

And now this.

"Are you sure about this?" Jake asks.

Her mother appears on the screen and her father doesn’t blink, concentrated as he is on her.

No, she isn't, but what choice does she have?

"You can't go back," he insists. "It will change you irreparably, it will mark you for life. You will never go back to be the person you were before. Are you ready to accept the weight of the deaths you will cause, their blood on your hands?"

Everything in her rejects what she is going to do, which she knows she must do.

"My sister, my responsibility," Bellamy says, approaching her and the lever. Aurora grimaces, as if a mortal blow had been struck her, but remains silent to observe in a corner, arms folded, without intervening. Solemn and stern, her figure is a point of dim light that screeches in the darkness that surrounds them.

"I have to save them," she replies to both, her father and Bellamy.

Her father nods and the resolution with which he looks at her, partly pride, partly grieve, breaks her heart. She has already seen that look. She already knows what he is going to tell her.

"Then you don't need me anymore."

Is this really the end?

Bellamy puts his hand over hers on the lever. "Together," he says.

"Together," she repeats. It sounds like a promise, like absolution.

Later, when the ghosts that inhabited Mount Weather begin to regroup above ground and disappear, she is there to watch. Jasper's recriminations still echo in her ears, every time she closes her eyes, she sees Maya's scarred face.

There are a multitude of men, women and children killed by radiation - _by her_ -, hundreds of Grounders and Reapers. The meadow seems too small to hold them all. In the front row, ready to guide them, her father has regained his smile. Clarke starts breathing again. They are all there and in death there is no longer distinction between enemies and friends, between guilty and innocent. Death made them equal. For a moment the world fills with blazing light and spreads in the void as far as the eye can see, igniting the darkness of the night like an explosion, so much that Clarke is blinded by it and must cover her eyes, hide them behind the palms of her hands.

When the light goes out, the dream also dies out. The meadow turns back to being just a meadow, the dead go back to be the bodies that must be buried and the face of her father turns into the memory that has always been.

When she begins to cry, she collapses on the now deserted meadow, surrounded by the embrace of the suddenly overwhelming sky. She has a thousand reasons to cry. She cries for Finn, for her father, for Maya, for Jasper and finally for herself, for the girl she was once and who no longer exists, buried under the weight of impossible choices, of the genocide she just perpetrated.

_Il sole può tramontare e poi risorgere. Noi, invece, una volta che il nostro breve giorno si spegne, abbiamo davanti il sonno di una notte senza fine._

**_\- Catullo_ **

iii

The morning starts with the usual question. It has become a kind of ritual. After collecting her few belongings and disguising the passage in the cave where she spent the night, Clarke takes note of the presences that haunt her.

"Why are you still here?" she asks Maya, hiding a frown little and badly. The truth is, she still doesn't understand. She could be with Jasper. After all - "I am not the regret that holds you back," she says and knows she is right when, for the first time since she appeared in front of her, Maya meets her gaze with a firm one, the words that she addresses few, but clear and resolute, "No, but I am yours."

 _Nothing could be truer_ , she thinks and nods to herself. This must be an extraordinary morning in many ways because instead of falling silent and going to check the traps as she usually would, she is once again coming to a halt.

"Do you hate me?" It's a stupid question. Even if Maya doesn't hate her for what she did to her, she will never forgive her for exterminating her people. And yet she needs to hear her answer. God, when did she become so self-defeating?

Her hesitation is infinitesimal. "Right or wrong, that's what you chose," Maya replies and shakes her head. "None of us are innocent. I won't throw the first stone, Clarke. I wasn't that kind of person when I was alive. I don't want to become that now that I'm dead."

Clarke goes to check that traps.

***

The first time she hears the name the Grounders have given her, she burst out laughing and doesn't stop until she tastes the tears on her lips and her laughs turn into sobs.

***

"You have to go home. Your place isn't here."

Sitting by the side of the stream, Clarke continues to do the laundry, but she looks up. She realizes instantly that she has made a mistake. The look of exasperated frustration, the refractions of light from the canopy above their heads that seem to bring out tiny specks like freckles on Aurora's tired face, the martial posture in the shoulders. Everything cries out a name that she has forbidden herself to think, let alone name.

She swallows and closes her hands into fists to hide the slight tremor that passes through them, lowering the head.

"It isn’t even with them," she replies curtly.

"Just because you decided you don’t deserve it," Aurora says along the lines of her tone. Then she softens considerably. "It's peacetime for you too."

 _Wanheda_ whisper the elderly, her name has already turned into a bogeyman for children. In a different life she would have been _fisa_ , a healer. Not in this, apparently.

"There will never be peace for me." Once pronounced, it has a bitter taste like all the truths that you would prefer to forget. "Don’t you understand?" Her hands are tight around the shirt she was rinsing, so tense that the joints begin to hurt. "The war is not over. It will never end."

She hears her walk away and counts the steps. It is usually at the tenth that she disappears. _Five. Six. Seven._ On the eighth Aurora pauses. A gust of wind carries her answer, and this too hurts, an intense burning like a wasp sting. "It's not over, it's true. You still carry it in your heart."

***

She doesn’t stop fighting. She fights tooth and claw, how she learned to do by training in villages when she stopped to trade her prey in exchange for news, medicinal herbs and spices, clothes.

Aurora reappears at her side during a rest. "Five hidden knives in addition to the one he threatened you with," she lists, in a well-established procedure. "His boots have a reinforced toe." She disappears again.

Hours later, after the third failed escape attempt, Aurora returns. Something on her tense face makes her heart beat at a faster pace. A name, the one she refuses to pronounce, fills every space within her. Bellamy, sings her blood. Bellamy, creak her sore bones. Bellamy. Bellamy. Bellamy.

"He's looking for you. Hold on as long as you can. Buy them some time. He's close."

***

The ceremonial dress that they made her wear adheres to the skin like a sheath. They braided her hair in an elaborate hairstyle, made up her eyes with war paint. She observes the reflection in the golden plate and sees a feral looking stranger. She has her face, but her gaze is cold as ice, like a blade treacherously planted between the shoulder blades.

She wonders if that's how they imagined her when they chose to give her that name. Wanheda. A farce. Just a title with no power. She runs her hands over the dress, smoothing imaginary folds.

Aurora looks at her like a hawk, without blinking. "Don’t be nervous."

"I'm not," she replies.

"Are you sure about this?"

The question recalls a similar situation, although the circumstances were completely different. Triggers painful memories. She purses her lips. "Do I have a choice?"

Aurora lingers. Her eyes meet hers in the distorted reflection. "One day you will have it," she promises with a fierce frown and rests a hand on her shoulder, squeezing slightly, "and that day will be glorious."

_At the start, the end, and in the middle._

_Strange how it mattered so much,_

_when now it matters so little._

**_\- Lang Leav_ **

The last time she saw him, she wore the vestiges of the title the Grounders gave her like a mask, like the double-edged sword in which she chose to transform herself. He asked her to go home. She refused. She wasn’t ready. She thought she had to prove that she deserved it. Part of her still thinks so.

The next time she sees him there is a girl's ghost behind him. She has an intelligent and attractive heart-shaped face, elegant and thin eyebrows like swallow wings. Clarke tries to remember her name, but the truth is, she has no idea who she is.

When she remains alone in the room, handcuffed and with her heart turn off, she cannot understand.

"I couldn't convince him," she murmurs to anyone, fighting against the lump in her throat and the sense of abandonment. Why?

Then she remembers the girl and has the answer she was looking for. Guilt. Sorrow hidden behind anger. Revenge sold as justice. Here's how Pike managed to win Bellamy's loyalty, his trust.

People surrounded by ghosts are loved ones. She always thought that. What does this belief reveal of her character, what does it let out of her heart? And what does it reveal about Bellamy that two women chose to stay with him even after death?

***

"Why isn't she here?"

She doesn't remember ever having experienced such pain. Or maybe yes. All pains are the same to the core, yet different. Like loves. Grieves are forgotten, you learn to anesthetize them, tame them to your will and then, when you seem to have returned to normal, you lose someone else and everything starts all over again, in an infinite cycle of perpetual pain.

Aurora indicates the tin case containing the Flame. "Because she's in there."

"What if I destroy it?" She feels herself gasping. "Would she become like you?"

For the first time since she knows her, there is a feeling of turmoil in Aurora Blake's eyes. "Would you really want it?"

That, more than anything else, breaks her. "I don't know," she says. Under the ribcage the pain is sharp and persistent, as if a rib had broken and pierced a lung. "I don't know what I want anymore. I just know I'm tired of being alone."

Aurora nods, her lips tight, her face lit by the glare of the candles in a play of jagged chiaroscuro. "Go home, Clarke," she says finally, and that simple statement seems to suck up the oxygen in the room and any residual energy from her body. Sheer obstinacy and adrenaline keep her on her feet now.

It is a prayer and much, much more.

"Do I still have one?"

"You will always have one," she replies. "Yours are the people you desperately protect."

***

Lincoln's ghost is one of the brightest she's ever seen. Clarke feels tears sting her eyes, unwanted. This, more than Wells or her father’s farewell, is the point of no return. Then Aurora leaves her side and extends her hand towards Lincoln who is watching her in awe and wonder. He must have already guessed who the woman in front of him is. The resemblance is remarkable after all.

"Nice to finally meet you, boy," Aurora says and if the edgy fold of her smile is purely Octavia, the way she weighs him, cold and calculating, is entirely Bellamy, his fierce protection. "I suppose I'm the nosy mother-in-law. I suggest you’d better get to work. Clarke has been trying to win my favor for months."

***

A muddy field and three hundred Grounders with wounds caused by firearms.

Burning them requires the joint work of thirty men.

At the end of the day she is so exhausted that every muscle in her body claims the comfort of a bed. Instead of heading for the tent that she and Lexa share, she falls with a thud where she is. Ghosts are a string of pearls against the horizon. Too many to count. Too many to pretend they don't exist.

Aurora appears at her side, gray as a cloudy sky, her eyes looking like molten lead, winter in her spine.

When Lincoln appears too, when she sees him making his way to the crowded ghosts, Clarke understands. Her heart emits discordant notes, like war drums. She runs towards him. It started to rain again, and her tears mix with the downpour, cleaning her cheeks streaked with earth, blood and sweat.

Lincoln's smile is the same as her father's, the same as Wells'. Ineffable. Enigmatic.

He can't do it. He cannot. "What about Octavia?"

Lincoln stops and her hands itch for the desire she has to portray him as he appears at that moment. A man stuck in a storm, in the only quiet spot while the rest of the world collapses and crumbles. Raindrops trapped on his eyelashes, on his nose, on his forehead.

"My people, my responsibility," he replies in a hieratic tone, staring at her and Aurora with unfathomable eyes like abysses.

The world shines again in front of her, burning and blazing and, not for the first time, when the dream fades, the weight of her duty lands on her. This time she doesn't collapse. Her shoulders have had time to get used to that burden, they are wide enough to bear it now.

"My people, my responsibility," she repeats. It has the sacred taste of an oath, but also of a sentence.


	2. Chapter 2

_These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb._

_**-** _ **_Najwa Zebian_ **

iv

"Why didn't you let him speak?"

Clarke knows what she's really asking.

She knows her well enough to grasp the veiled reproach that the question only lets out. Afterall if there is a supporter of her happy ending, one even fiercer than her mother, it's Aurora Blake. All the better if that also includes Bellamy.

The bed is almost too comfortable. After months spent sleeping on camp beds or on the ground or not sleeping at all, it is a strange sensation to sink into the softness of the cushions, to feel the silky bedspread under her fingertips. The hot shower served to loosen the tension accumulated behind the neck, in her back. It wasn’t enough to put out the tiredness that ignites every nerve in her body. Her thoughts are still at war, they cannot find a point of understanding.

Clarke doesn’t take her eyes off the fireplace as she tries to pick up the words that are fist-fighting in her head to transform them into complete sentences.

"I want him to say it because it's the truth," she answers, her voice little more than a whisper. "Because he thinks it will be the first of many other times. Not because the world is ending, and it could be the last chance to say it." She turns her head and in Aurora's intensely alert expression, she finds the breath of fresh air of an empty meadow lit by stars, an oblique rain cleaning her from the smell of death, a smile of pure light. "I want to start our life together in peacetime. I'm tired of fighting, even though I don't know the kind of person I will become when I am forced to put down my arms."

Aurora doesn’t blink. Her hands brush her damp hair away from her face. They are cold to the touch like the frozen water of a mountain stream, the barrel of a rifle. Clarke doesn’t retreat. The touch of death has stopped scaring her for years. In the last few months, it has become more dear and real to her than the caresses of the living.

"You’re extraordinary," Aurora says and the sincerity with which she is looking at her, the love and tenderness that shine in her eyes, are dazzling. "Whether it's peacetime or wartime, it doesn't change who you are in here and here." One hand pressed against her chest, while two fingers touch her forehead. "Your head and heart are in the right place. They always have been."

***

Ghosts stay behind for regret, but then they remain out of love, out of devotion. Ghosts for her have always been that. The testimony that death doesn’t kill love.

With Echo it’s the first time that it isn’t so. Hate shines mercilessly on the girl's face behind her, razor sharp.

"She killed me," the girl with a feral smile explains. "She killed me and stole my name. One day she will die, and I will be here waiting for her."

Clarke has stopped trembling in the face of threats, the horrors of war. Even in the face of the end of the world she remains an empty shell, her reactions watered down in some way. But she still feels dismayed. The promises of ghosts have a different value from that of the living. They are inviolable and there is no going back because the price, in case of perjury, is the soul and an immortal torment.

***

"You won't make it in time. You can't go."

It's the end. She understands it when even Aurora cannot erase the anguish from her apprehensive eyes and tries to get in her way. It is the first time she has spoken to her since she closed Octavia out of the bunker, since she pointed a gun at Bellamy.

Clarke tightens her jaw, stiffens her shoulders. Pain reverberates from the mouth and the base of the skull down the neck and her back like a fire snake.

Defeat tastes like ash and iron under her tongue. She walks around Aurora and begins to move towards the satellite tower with her head down. "I have to."

***

The sky explodes around her in a deflagration that reverberates deeply into her bones. The ground trembles under her feet by the destructive power of radiation. Clarke breathes its violence and every inhalation is a torment that becomes more agonizing with each passing second, without offering her truces of any kind.

In the safety of Becca's laboratory, while looking for ways to contain the pain and alleviate the burning spread over her whole body, a voice accompanies her through her maneuvers.

The walls keep swinging before her eyes. Her breathing sounds like a whistle, she has blood on her teeth and gums. A voice that she knows, so like that of Bellamy and equally loved, which gradually lowers and disappears like a tide, follows her into oblivion.

"Clarke, breathe. You can do it. You have faced worse things. Breathe. _Breathe."_

Clarke breathes and when she wakes up, even if part of her doesn't want to, she continues to do so.

v

She is completely alone. For the first time in her life, she doesn't even have a ghost to keep her company. Her theory is that it's the radiation. They interfere or something like that.

She looks around. This world, which is burned and continues to burn, which is dying in order to be reborn in the metaphor that is life itself. The circle that closes and then starts its cycle over again, in a succession of actions and repetitions. She’s a living corpse. Dead alive. _An oxymoron_ , she thinks. She turns to share it with – she blinks.

The moment passes, the silence remains. The feeling under the skin worsens.

She has never felt so lonely.

***

Inside Arkadia she follows the trail of devastation to the inner quarters. Without stopping by the bar, she passes the incinerated skeletons it contains.

She pockets the farewell letter that Jasper left for Monty and even if it's a little wet at the corners, who is there to expose her for a moment of weakness?

Before leaving, she strokes Jasper's goggles one last time. Thinks back to the boy pierced by a spear and whose life she saved, not the one whose heart she broke. To a girl who loved art as an exaltation of the expressive ability of men and their genius, unable to be mean even in the face of death.

"I hope you are together in a better place," she whispers and the silence around her has never been more deafening.

***

Aurora reappears as soon as she sets foot in the valley. Her austere profile, capable of demonstrating a composed and serene calm on any occasion, undergoes a sudden change when their eyes meet. The initial confusion gives way to a different, more violent emotion, then cracks.

They say that death is imperturbable and immutable. That's the end of it all, the closing note. That you reap what you sow in life. It is a shameless lie.

"Thank God," Clarke gasps between sobs. Aurora's arms surround her and it’s like being embraced by the stone, by the forest itself. It is as if the trees felt the intimacy of that reunion in the air and wanted to share it with light and warmth, the green of the leaves brighter than ever, the earth malleable and yielding under her knees.

***

The peculiar vibe she perceived by setting foot in the village is now explained. A little girl surrounded by a whole clan of ghosts. The thought crushes her heart.

"I will take care of her. I won't let anything bad happen to her. I swear."

These ghosts don't speak English, but they grasp the meaning of her words, the commitment she has just made. She has seen this before with Wells, her father and Lincoln, but never like this. It is like seeing the implosion of a constellation of stars. Their peaceful faces, devoured by a light of an impossible purity, more dazzling than the sun.

The regret of loving parents, that of having abandoned their own child, set free by the awareness of leaving her in trusted hands.

***

"I don’t understand."

Aurora followed the trajectory of her eyes. On any other occasion Clarke would find amusing the disbelief on her long face, the ashen pallor on her high cheekbones. But now it closes her throat and she can’t breathe. She hugs Madi a little tighter and quickly looks away from the kiss that Bellamy and Echo are exchanging. Something inside her shatters under the umpteenth awareness. _Six years,_ a voice inside her says ruthlessly. _Did you really think that nothing would change? Did you really think you could start again from where you left?_

She feels a hand on her shoulder.

Clarke doesn't understand either, but the incomprehension has made her silent as a grave, has dulled her senses. Thus, there she stands dumbstruck in witness her heart’s ruination, consumed with grief for what has been taken from her. No, it’s not like that. It turns out that she never had him in the first place. 

***

There are so many ghosts, too many to count. Their empty expressions make her skin crawl. She has already seen those looks in other gaunt faces and the sense of bewilderment she feels is the same as she felt back then, the one arising from the darkness induced by the hearts of men.

She remembers as if it were yesterday Ajay's story, a ghost from Factory Station. She was fifteen when she found about the Blight. Memories of when she was a little girl and having tea with a sad-eyed lady. The idea that that had been her end- The bile fills her throat, now as then. This time she doesn’t throw up and doesn’t let the sobs shake her back as if they could break her. She swallows the sour bite and let the horror flow through her veins like poison, like acid. She plants her feet firmly on the ground. Her eyes burn. She doesn’t cry and doesn’t look away from the army of dead who surround her, their chanting 'Wanheda' when they notice her.

"Whatever happened, it must have been terrible. Clarke-"

She already knows. Aurora doesn't need to add anything else. Not a word of this will have to reach Bellamy. Not if she can avoid it.

***

"She's not the daughter I raised," Aurora says and her despair is like a laceration. Observing it is a more excruciating experience than any trauma.

"None of us is still the same," she tries to comfort her, but Aurora shows no signs of abating. Her logic is rigorous, it leaves no room for unnecessary sentimentality. That precisely this woman, a rational creature with a pragmatic mind and not prone to affective manifestations, has consciously chosen to contravene her own nature for love could appear as one of the greatest mysteries of the known universe. It could and can for anyone other than Clarke.

"You are in all that matters," Aurora replies, the mourning etched deeply into her face already sharpened up by concern. "The war may have hardened you, but your heart hasn't stopped beating, hasn't stopped breaking."

Clarke doesn't know how to answer that. It is one of the very first lessons she learned. A broken heart continues to beat and function and nothing prevents it from breaking repeatedly.

***

"No," Bellamy says curt, but Clarke looks over her shoulder at the concentrated and serious-looking woman who is behind him.

"She is still my daughter," she says. "If you do it, you will have to say goodbye to me."

Clarke pales.

She doesn't insist, and her idea is quickly dismissed.

***

"You know he did it to save your life. Octavia would have killed you."

She knows. Of course, she knows. But there are more formidable opponents, worse fate. She is not afraid of death. Why should she? She has seen what awaits her, whether she decides to stay or decides to go. She has no reason to be afraid.

"He took a child, my daughter and made her a target. I asked him not to do it and he did it the same." On her wrists there are abrasions for when he left her chained to a wall to scream and in despair. If she doesn’t disinfect and bandages them properly, they could get infected. The bruises are deep and will leave scars. Not that it matters, not really. What is one more? Especially when there are others hidden, under the skin, that will never heal. "Because his family is more important than mine," she concludes with bitterness.

"I know," Aurora says and there is a whole world of painful truths enclosed in that simple statement. My sister, my responsibility, echoes in her head. Years have passed since then. Some things never change, and certain experiences define the type of person you grow to be. It is typical of Bellamy to sacrifice anything to save those he loves. It is part of him, of his nature. An essential trait.

She looks to her right to make sure she hasn't woken up Madi. Curled up in the front seat, she is pale and sweaty, and her expression has not relaxed even in sleep. Clarke grits her teeth.

"You wouldn't forgive something like that," she says.

"That's why you're better than me. Your love makes you stronger."

 _Love_. Yes, she loved him once, she continues to do so. Of a hopeless and absolutist love. She had loved the memory of the boy she knew, without having the slightest idea of the man who would return after six years among the stars. Animated by blind trust in him, in their bond. But now, in the darkest hour of her life, she is no longer convinced of what will happen, that that trust has been well placed. Not only in him, but also in herself. Because in the quiet of the Rover, while driving in the desert, she can finally admit it. Bellamy isn't the only one who has changed. She is too. Maybe that's the problem. The roles have reversed, the dynamics must necessarily adapt. _I loved him like he was one of you. As if he were a ghost._ And that was her first mistake. She never considered the inevitable change made by time, by distance.

"I don’t know anymore."

"Yes, you know, or you wouldn't feel that way."

"He betrayed me."

"And you're leaving him."

"Octavia won't kill her own brother."

"She will have to if she wants to hold her power. Once you would have understood it. Certain sacrifices are necessary to serve a greater good. Now you are too blinded by the fear of losing what you love to save all of them, to remember who you are."

Who is she? Wanheda seems like a distant memory, the shadow of an ancient horror. After six years of being simply Clarke she thought she had gotten rid of that part of her past. Now she realizes it has been a naive hope. It will never go away. It will never leave her free. It will never stop haunting her. "I don't want to be that kind of person anymore. I thought -" she suddenly shuts up and blinks to disperse the tears. Her vision is blurred. No need to say more. Aurora already understood. She squeezes the steering wheel and put her foot down on the accelerator.

***

She is watching Madi and Bellamy. The countdown has already started in her mind. Clarke clutches the radio as if her life depended on it. Aurora seems distracted and when she understands the reason it's too late.

Bellamy and Madi are in the same position, but suddenly they are no longer alone. Hundreds of ghosts have occupied the clearing and their glow is pale and intermittent. Aurora moves away from her and Clarke's heart skips a beat before resuming its beating again, like a bird trying to get out from its cage. "What are you doing?"

Aurora doesn’t smile and perhaps she loves her a little more for that. The idea of leaving her doesn’t give her any pleasure. "I'm staying here," she says.

"No, you can't-" _you have to stay with me._

"Someone has to guide them into the Beyond. You know it's the smart choice. Like Jake and Lincoln before me, now it's my turn."

"I can't lose you too." She isn’t whispering and isn’t hiding herself. _Let them see_ , she thinks. Let them think she's gone crazy. The great Wanheda, finally broken by the weight of the atrocities she committed in the name of peace. "I can't be alone."

"Oh, sweetheart." Aurora retraces the steps that separate them. She places a hand on her cheek, brushes her forehead with a kiss in a demonstration of affection more unique than rare. Her light, stronger than ever, seems to want to welcome her within itself. "You won't be alone. Look around. The distance you see is only an illusion. It would take so little to overcome it."

Like a moth attracted by the flame, Bellamy turns at that moment to give her a look that she cannot decipher. Clarke brings her attention back to Aurora. "I can't." Her throat is so swollen that every word has a rasping sound.

"The last steps are always the most difficult."

"Every step is for me."

"It doesn't have to be that way. Tell him how you feel. Don't wait."

"He hates me."

"He's angry. He'll come around. Forgiveness is the core of your relationship. He's angry because he cares about you. You just have to be patient."

When she moves away and begins to go down the ramp, it is as if half of herself has just been torn apart. How can she continue to live, how can she survive after something like that?

She extends a hand to hold her, but Aurora is already out of reach. She can't breathe and tears make it difficult to see. Everything is covered with a patina, one sheet of glass between her and Aurora. "Don't go. _Please_."

The rest of the ghosts are also beginning to shine. Aurora is crying like her, but she is also smiling. A tearful smile addressed to her, only for her.

"I love you like a daughter. I saw you fight against the world and against yourself. Growing up in the brave and strong woman you've always been destined to become. A warrior. A healer. A mother. I'm so proud of you, Clarke. So grateful for the time we spent together. But now that time is over and both of us have to move forward."

 _You were my peace when I thought I didn't deserve it_ , she thinks.

"Aurora-"

The light burns stronger. Distantly she hears Raven scream to close the door. She registers the order, as Bellamy has turned to her, but is unable to move, to speak. She feels cut off from everything and everyone.

The light has turned into fire, it’s like observing radiation expanding from the top of a satellite tower all over again. White, blinding, cutting like a blade that saturates the colors with clear, defined outlines.

"This isn't a goodbye," Aurora says, her face a dying star. "May we meet again."

Clarke doesn’t look away. She knows she should. The world is burning around her again, trembling under her feet. This time, when it's all over, she collapses on the floor and chooses to stay in the dream a little longer. Someone prevents her.

"What's going on? Clarke?"

She covers her ears, bends over, trying to make herself small, invisible. She doesn't want to hear. She doesn't want to see. All she wants is to remain in that light that cleans up every sin, that erases all suffering.

"She's gone," she repeats, rocking herself. "She's gone."

Minutes or hours later, someone picks her up. Her brain instinctively recognizes the body pressed against hers. The voice that whispers in her ear, promising that it will be all right, makes her cry a little harder. They inject something into her neck.

Oblivion has never been so sweet.

***

Around her the voices continue to speak, crossing one another.

"What the hell is she talking about?"

"Friend of souls. _Keryonlukot_. She can see the spirits of the warriors after they left us.”

“How long has it been going on? Has she always been like this?"

“You don’t become one. It’s something you’re born with, they say.”

"Slow down. Are you really saying that Clarke can see ghosts?"

"Not only see them. Talk to them, act as an intermediary between the living and the undead. I had never met one. The last of which remains trace was killed by the Dark Commander when I was a child."

"Killed? Why?"

"For the same reason they hunted Wanheda. It is a terrifying power to be able to see not only the allies, but also the enemies who fell in battle, the people you helped to kill. It is a burden that few can bear without losing their minds. That's why they are so precious and that's why people like her become healers, never warriors."

The voices come and go. The pain remains, it doesn’t fade. It’s eating her alive.

***

"All this time she’s been keeping secrets, telling lies. She went through that every day, and she never said anything to me.”

Clarke can sense the frustration and guilt that radiate from him, the rage barely contained in his voice, the sense of helplessness, betrayal.

"Would you have believed her if she did?" Raven asks. "Look, we're all guilty."

"Not as much as me."

"Right," remarks Murphy, "because your relationship is unique and special."

As for Bellamy, she doesn't need to see them to imagine their expressions. Even with her eyes closed she can see Raven's frowning forehead, Murphy rolling his eyes. It is painful that she knows them so well and then remember that she doesn't know them at all. Not anymore. She lost them and it's all her fault.

The voices go back to being whispers.

***

"Who else? Wells?" Bellamy's tone is dry, gruff.

Clarke nods and doesn't raise her head. She doesn't trust her voice right now.

"Your father?"

She nods again.

"Finn." The fact that it was more a statement than a question and the way he pronounced his name, as if he were praying for her to deny and reassure him of the contrary, convince her to meet his gaze.

She immediately realizes that she has made a mistake. Not because he looks horrible, purple shadows around dark eyes and a look that could kill on the spot. But because for a moment she saw a different pair of eyes, another face. She feels a twinge in her chest.

"Just an echo," she forces herself to answer.

This time it’s he who nods, looking away first. Bellamy turns his mouth in a grimace. It gives him a wild expression that she hasn't seen in years, since before Praimfaya.

"Lexa?"

"She's in the Flame," she replies. _Regretted. Lost._ "As long as that thing exists, she will be trapped in there."

Clarke observes the way his eyes widen slightly, the moment when understanding passes through them. She can read his thoughts as if they were her own. That's why she didn't want Madi-

Bellamy swallows, then continues to interrogate her. "Mount Weather. Did you see them after-"

Clarke clenches her fists over the sheets. She doesn't want to think about it. She can't think about it. _Her father. A meadow too small and too vast, covered with wildflowers._ She drives away those memories as she would do with annoying insects.

"And Tondc," she interrupts him. "And-" but here she is silent, biting her cheek in a remorse of conscience that doesn't concern her.

"What?" he presses her. He knows her too well not to understand what she wants to avoid, what she is trying not to say. So well, in fact, that he manages to connect the dots easily, relating cause and effect. The crash is silent, but no less horrible to observe. "The massacre," he guesses. A muscle flickers in his cheek, showing the first crack in an otherwise perfect mask. "They too?"

"And Lincoln."

He continues to observe her as if he were seeing her for the first time, as if she were a stranger he doesn’t recognize. It shouldn't hurt her so much and yet she would lie in saying that she is immune to his contempt, his lack of trust. "All this before Praimfaya," he says, severing the grave silence with a blow of scissors.

Clarke remains motionless. Lying on the infirmary bed, her body still languid and exhausted, her mind still dazed by the effects of the tranquilizer they shoot her, she tries not to think about them, all the people she has lost, who have left her. It is difficult, especially recalling the words and gestures of comfort that they would have reserved for her in similar moments. The dead are more compassionate than the living, their kindness is authentic, it has no ulterior motives. In the living there is too much pride, too much fear. They think they have all the time at their disposal. The dead know that its flow is not infinite, that it is deceptive. The living consider themselves infallible, the dead recognize that everyone is fallible.

Bellamy makes another horrible grimace. He rubs his face. "In the bunker. Did you see anyone?"

"Not many."

"Let me be the judge of that. How many?"

"Bellamy," she whispers, but there is no mercy in his eyes when they plant themselves in hers. They are open wounds, hazy and tormented. "How many, Clarke," he repeats in a dangerously low, threatening voice.

"More than two hundred," she admits.

"For God’s sake," he blurts out, before composing himself. "The woman you were crying for-"

"I don't want to talk about it," she says quickly. Thinking about Aurora is not like thinking about her father, Wells or Lexa. She knew and loved them while they were alive, the time spent with them after they died was a surplus. Despite this, losing them isn't even comparable to losing Aurora. The mourning for her is something she will never get over, it entered in her blood like a toxin. It is part of her.

Bellamy frowns, leans forward. "I-"

She won't let him finish. "No, you don't understand. I _can't_ talk about it. Can't you see?" She opens her arms wide. She wants him to see, to understand. Aurora would have done it. "Wherever I go, I bring death and destruction with me. Every person I love dies. I am cursed. My love is a curse." She shuts her eyes to hide her weakness. They burn as they did during sandstorms. _Coward_ , she calls herself. It doesn't matter. "I want to be alone." It is not a request, nor is it an order, but something halfway.

She hears him linger and doesn't know whether to scream or cry.

 _What else do you want from me. I have given you everything. All I am. Everything I've done. Any name you wanted except one. Not hers_ , she thinks. She wants Aurora to stay hers a little longer. Only in this way she will be able to lull herself into the illusion that she has not lost her, that she is still with her.

***

The truth explodes in her face and predictably, knowing her luck, it comes out in the worst possible way.

During the escape from the valley someone must have had time to recover some of her belongings. Otherwise she cannot explain the battered black book that Bellamy is holding and is waving in front of her face. The one that Aurora, to tease her, called her logbook.

"This drawing," he points it out to her and Clarke stares at the page on which he opened it. In the first sketch Madi has just caught a trout and is showing it to her with a grin of triumphant joy. Her figure caught in the movement vibrates with enthusiasm, exuberance, vitality. In the second - her heart skips a beat – there she is. Sitting on a rock, an aura of glow shining around her, Aurora looks ahead with a relaxed and strangely disarmed expression. Clarke remembers distinctly that day and in remembering, the nostalgia of those days overwhelms her. Sunny days. It all seemed easier back then. In the uncertainty of tomorrow, we become custodians and admirers of moments like those, we learn to recognize their fragile and disruptive beauty and to grasp them before they wither, to give value to what matters.

"How could you do this?" Bellamy asks frantically. He has not yet realized the extent of her omissions. "You never knew her. She died while you were in the Skybox, before they sent you to Earth. I know for sure that you never met her. How-" He understood. "It was _her_. Has she been with you the whole bloody time?" Anger dilated his pupils and there is a vein on his temple that pulsates and looks like an exposed root. "And it never crossed your mind to tell me?"

She has already seen him angry in the past. Never like this.

 _He's angry because he cares about you_ , says Aurora in her cool, practical voice. _He'll come around._

"She wouldn’t let me," she replies. "She didn't want to become yet another responsibility."

"She was my mother! My family!"

Clarke flinches internally. Does he think she doesn't know? Does he really think it's not one of her deepest regrets?

 _She was also part of mine. I loved her too_ , she would like to tell him. Instead she sighs, every trace of struggle has left her. She deserves his anger, however - "You can't forgive me, can you?"

The direct question must have caught him off guard. Just a moment ago there was such a fire in his eyes, a wildness. In the next instant, something else is stirring like a strange fear. But as quickly as it appeared, it has already gone in the time required to blink.

Bellamy rubs the base of his neck, ruminating on the next words. Anger is regressing, but it is still there. She can see it in the stiffness of his shoulders, in his labored breathing and in the accuracy with which he avoids looking at her, as if he couldn’t bear the sight of her.

"I always thought that there were no secrets between us."

Oh, this hurt. She knew it would hurt, but it's like a whole different type of pain.

He doesn’t mean only Aurora. She is just the tip of the problem. Clarke knows how to read between the lines the accusations that he will never pronounce, but are so evident, that are reflected in the circumspection with which he treats her, in the prudence he has never had towards her.

 _Why didn't you trust me_ , his eyes seem to ask. _Why didn't you confide in me?_

From where can she start to make him understand? What can she tell him to make her choices more reasonable, her mistakes acceptable?

And above all how can she try to transform into words the bond with his mother when she doesn't even know how to explain it to herself? To define is to limit. It means trying to confine an endless river of colors, sounds and smells in the impossibly small space of a bottle.

Still silence, it’s always there. Like a wall between them, built on misunderstandings, lies, detachment. Then, when she believes it's all over, that’s where the miracle happens.

Bellamy takes up her logbook and flips through it slowly, with the certainty of those who know what they are doing, what they are searching for because they already know where to find it. Obviously, he already saw all of it before confronting her. Enough to have memorized its contents. His long, tapered fingers turn the pages with so much kindness that it stirs and awakes some strings within her. His gaze has become soft all of a sudden and it lessens his angular and perpetually frowning features. He is looking at the drawings with something akin to reverence and an elusive emotion that she doesn’t understand, which in anyone else she wouldn’t hesitate to call awe. She doesn't linger on the drawings. She doesn't want to see them. Each one is the testimony of what she has done, the only legacy that remains of her loved ones, besides memories and melancholy. Each page is full of whispers.

"I think that might be my favorite one," he says. She looks at him again out of the corner of her eye. She can't help it. The face that was once constantly grim, stretched by excessive thinness, in which a sense of restlessness and impertinence shone through. That now belongs to a man she is learning to know and understand anew.

The drawing under scrutiny fills two papers. Clarke observes the peaceful smiles of Madi's parents and the rest of the village. She tried to capture best she could the radiant brightness that their bodies emitted before dissolving. In the front there are two women. She showed them from behind, side by side, so close that they touch the respective edges.

Clarke traces Aurora's profile with a fingertip. "Yes," she says quietly, "mine too."

Bellamy's hand overlaps hers and squeezes it as if it were the last desperate attempt to hold back the past. Just like her, he is not willing to give up what they were once. "For what it's worth," he speaks softly, slowly and a little hoarsely. "I'm sorry I wasn't there when you needed me." _But I'm here now_ , it seems he is saying. _I'm here now, if you want me._

The feeling is familiar. Smooth, homely. Maybe she remembers how to do this. A time when he made her happy, and she wants to go back there. God, how much she loved this man. She loved the boy he was. She loved forgiving him.

"It’s all right," she says, blinking back the tears. He doesn’t have to compensate. No need to apologize. After all, she has never truly been alone. "I had her."

The embrace in which he winds her doesn’t evoke the stone nor the forest. It retains the heat of the sun, ever-changing landscapes, everything that is _alive_. It seems to fill the empty spaces inside her, wiping out years of cobwebs and cold. Mourning stops eating her alive and for a long, astonishing moment she manages to keep the pieces of herself together. Aurora was right. She isn’t alone.

vi

When she wakes up from cryogenic sleep, she blinks, dazed. The world are splinters of light, it pierces her eyes, throbs in her ears with the frantic buzz of blood.

***

She follows the sound of the voice and sees him. A boy. She's about to ask for his name, but something holds her back. Two figures emerge from the shadows, plant themselves behind the boy and in a moment of terrifying lucidity the feeling of familiarity that pervades her acquires a sense. Wrinkled faces, gray-streaked hair and the bizarre, wonderful splendor of a bioluminescence that is that of fireflies.

Clarke feels like she might cry. Monty and Harper share a beaming smile that speaks of love and sacrifice, of painful choices, of forgiveness born of repentance. Their lights envelop the boy lovingly. Pain takes her breath away. If the years and past experiences have taught her something, however, it is to pretend. She asks him all the right questions and doesn’t give more than a passing glimpse at Monty and Harper, Aurora's farewell still too vivid and recent to face another separation.

After Jordan leaves, she stumbles to catch her footing. Her breathing is wheezing and the increase in intrathoracic pressure during exhalation constricts her lungs as if invisible hands were grasping them like sponges. The strangled verse she emits doesn’t seem human.

Bellamy is a steady presence behind her. Quick to decide, and quick to act. Marked by the operative value of an acute and subtle intuition. He needs no explanation. As his mother did before him in a myriad of similar circumstances, too many to count, he places one hand on her shoulder and the other on her back, in the space between the shoulder blades, and begins to rub with soothing circular movements. The warmth that spreads from that point undermines the coldness that has taken possession of her body, absorbs the numbness in the vigil of grief, of yet another loss. _You are not alone_ , it’s what he’s saying. _I know how you feel, and you are not alone._

He is practically vibrating with tension, with the desire to ask her what she has seen, to know if she has seen something. Despite this, he says nothing. Why should he? _Death is death_ , she suddenly remembers, thinking of another boy, the first life she ever took. (They were together even then. It seems to have happened a lifetime ago. In a way it is.)

For the first time in her life she has a living, breathing soul to share the burden of that assertion.

And maybe, maybe, while she bends her head to rub her cheek against the hand that he has placed on her shoulder, this time what she tastes on her lips is not helplessness and the usual desperate sense of misery.

It is _hope_.

_The days of our ghosthood were these:_

_When we were children, when we had no keys_

_We entered through closed doors, unseen went out again._

_Our souls were the dissolved, ungathered, filtering rain._

_Our bodies sat upon out parents knees._

_In the second of our ghosthood_

_We went on foot among a moltitude,_

_In time of drought, in our hard youth, we winter-born._

_And those were visible to men as flowers in corn_

_Whose souls were eyes unseen that gaze from dark._

_We entered flesh and took our veil, our state._

_The third days of our ghosthood wait._

_When we are stripped by pain, by coming death far-seen,_

_Of earthly loves, of earth's fruit, that came so late to hand,_

_With that waking or falling into dream_

_We shall not cross into an unfamiliar land._

**_\- E.J. Scovell, The Ghosts_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story took me by surprise and touched me in ways that I haven’t felt for a while. To be so absorbed by my own ideas, so much that I decided to let my imagination run wild with the curiosity to see where it would lead me. Aurora's character wasn’t planned, and everything was supposed to be and gotten a lot darker, but then the image of the woman planted behind Bellamy stuck into my mind and never went away. I let her speak, I let the story guide me in a completely different direction from the one that I would have given her. Also, the last scenes were not planned in the original draft. Initially, no one was supposed to find out about Clarke's “ability”, but it would be a bitter ending and after losing Aurora, I couldn't help giving Clarke at the very least a kind of comfort, a taste of hope.  
> I hope you enjoyed the reading!  
> In this period of forced quarantine (I’m from Italy), I am rediscovering that time is an animal that makes tantrums if you neglect it. You must cure him, feed him, pamper him otherwise he turns against you. Fortunately, I work from home in the morning and between platforms like Netflix and Disney Plus, the collection of books still to be read and even a bit of workout, the afternoon flies fast enough. I am rediscovering the pleasure of being the master of my time, I am learning to divide it into productive activities, but also playful as I had never really been able to do before. Of course, being separated from my family (me and my brothers in the north, in the heart of the pandemic, and my parents in the south) isn’t easy just like it isn’t for anyone, but at least I'm not alone in my confinement and it's something I will never stop being grateful for. A virtual hug to everyone!


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